


Stolen

by aggiepuff



Series: Mischief in the Blood [2]
Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Iago makes a five second appearance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-24
Updated: 2018-03-24
Packaged: 2019-04-07 04:55:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14073336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aggiepuff/pseuds/aggiepuff
Summary: Zaida wakes up after a quick afternoon nap and she doesn't feel so good.





	1. Chapter 1

Her extremities tingle. That’s her first warning. Zaida takes a breath and her lungs struggle to expand. Her bedding, so comfortable the night before, is too heavy, her arms too weak. She crawls from her bed, sliding to the floor. From there she tries to stand and is forced to use the nightstand to leverage herself up. She stumbles forward, listing to the side. She wonders, thoughts strangely clouded, if this is what it’s like to have a fever.

Zaida frowns. That’s not right. She can't get sick. Fevers and colds and the flu—those are all human things. She's not human. But she’s never felt like this before, like the edges of her are fading away, dissipating into the ether, her bones aching and heavy as if they’re solid lead.

_ The Mirror, _ her groggy mind supplies.  _ The Mirror will know _ . She edges along, leaning heavily on the smooth wall of her lamp. It curves gently, forming a dome, the ceiling half obscured by deep red veils hung artfully over her circular bed. It’s a beautiful bedroom, with inlaid tiles forming a mural style family portrait along the opposite wall and plush carpets covering the floor, but in this moment Zaida finds it much too big. She lunges and nearly collapses into the red and gold chaise lounge by her bookshelf. She’s halfway to the door, almost there, just a few more steps.

She finally stumbles from her bedroom, dragging the door shut behind her. Her hand trembles on the polished brass knob. She stares at it, concentrating, wishing harder than she ever has.  _ The Mirror. I need the Mirror.  _ It’s like swimming through a vat of cold honey. She struggles to keep going; it feels like she’s drowning.

The doorknob flashes hot in her hand, once, twice, three times. She yanks the door open.

It’s a cupboard, barely six inches deep, and hanging from the back wall is a mirror, three feet tall and two feet wide, silver backed but without reflection. She opens her mouth and her voice is a hoarse whisper. “Magic mirror tell me do, tell your mistress, tell her true, answer me, obey my call…”

_ Call? What rhymes with call? _

Zaida can’t think, can hardly breath. It’s only by chance she remembers she is a genie and need not rhyme, for all that she is using a spell rather than a wish. She tries again, her voice weaker than before. “Magic mirror tell me do. Tell your mistress, tell her true. Answer me, obey my call. Why am I so weak? Why do I feel sick? What’s wrong with me?”

This particular magic mirror, without a Mirror Slave bound to its service, cannot give her a verbal answer. Instead, the black glass fogs over, gray smoke billowing over the surface until it clears and an island appears. Zaida chokes back a sob.  _ The Isle of the Lost. I’m on the Isle of the Lost. _

Her voice shakes, matching the trembling of the rest of her body, as she forces back the tears and says, “Show me Jordan. I need to talk to Jordan.”

The looking glass fogs over again but when it clears this time it shows the face of a dark skinned, black haired girl caught in the middle of applying mascara from the perspective of her mirror. The girl shrieks and stumbles back, mascara smearing down her cheek. “Damnit Zaida! We talked about this! Enough with the mirror magic!”

At the sight of Jordan’s face, Jordan’s beautiful, angry, wonderfully familiar face, the tears Zaida has kept at bay burst from her eyes.

Jordan blanches. “Zaida? Zaida, what’s wrong? What happened?”

“The Isle,” Zaida sobs weakly. “The Isle. I’m on—the Isle. Help me. I—I can’t—I can’t  _ breathe _ .”

Zaida collapses.


	2. Chapter 2

Jordan runs, shrieking for her father, for Mal and Evie and Jay and Carlos. She bursts into the girls’ dorm room, Genie appearing in a puff of blue smoke beside her.

“Jordan,” Genie says, “what’s wrong?”

Jordan whirls to her father. “Zaida, she’s on the Isle! She’s on the  _ Isle! _ ”

Genie’s bright blue skin goes white. “I’ll keep Fairy Godmother busy.” He disappears.

Mal, paler than usual, stands from her seat at her desk. “Zaida will be fine,” she tries to comfort Jordan. “I mean, she’s a genie. Uber powerful, right?”

“But there’s no magic on the Isle,” Evie reminds her gently.

“Still,” Mal tries, forcing herself to sound sure. “Zaida’s strong without her magic. She’ll be fine until we get to her.”

“You don’t understand!” Jordan cries. “Without magic Zaida will  _ die _ !”

“Zaida will die?” Jay asks, striding through the open door.

“We heard Jordan yelling,” Carlos says, following Jay. “What’s going on?”

“Zaida is on the Isle,” Evie explains.

“How?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care,” Jordan snaps at Carlos. “The how or why don’t matter right now. She can’t  _ stay _ there. We need to get her back!”

“Well, yeah,” Mal says, “but what’s this about her dying?”

Jordan takes a deep breath. “You can become genie one of two ways,” she says, forcing her voice to be calm. “You can either be a human who wishes to be a genie, or you can be born a genie. Zaida and I, we’re the second one. Which is  _ why we can’t exist without magic _ .”

Jay frowns. “I’m confused.”

Jordan forces back a growl. “Genie who are born like us, we’re essentially magic given sentience and a humanoid body. We’re literally held together by the magic of a wish.” She glares at the Islanders. “So, imagine what happens when you put someone like that in a place where magic does not— _ cannot _ exist.”

“Oh my god,” Evie whispers.

“I still don’t get it.”

Never before has Jordan wanted to hex someone as much as she wants to hex Jay in that moment. She glares at him. “Without magic—which is what keeps us  _ alive _ —Zaida will come apart, die, disappear into nothing.  _ Do you get it now? _ ”

Jay shoots to his feet. Something rises in his gut. His hands shake. Fire crackles along his skin, searing him to the bone. His fingertips burn. A deep red glow fills the room, a red Jay knows. He looks around wildly. “Zaida?”

“No, dude,” Carlos says, staring at him, “not Zaida.  _ You _ .”

Jay blinks. “Me?” He looks down. His hands are glowing. Dark, cherry red magic burns angrily from his hands, the glow reaching, spreading up his arms, snaking around his torso as if alive. “What the  _ fuck _ ?” The world spins, red light fills his vision.

“Shit,” someone says.

Jay collapses.


	3. Chapter 3

Carlos scrambles to Jay’s side. “What the hell was that?”

Jordan gasps. “He’s Jafar’s son.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Mal demands angrily, eyes flashing green.

“Jafar was a sorcerer!”

“ _So?_ ”

“Jafar is a human who became genie. When Aunt Jasmine stripped him of his power he just reverted to being a sorcerer again. A sorcerer bound to a lamp.”

“That explains his obsession with lamps,” Carlos mutters. He reaches out to touch Jay but stops, hand inches from Jay’s still glowing skin.

“But what does that have to do with _Jay_?" Evie demands.

“Sorcery is hereditary,” Jordan explains. “But I guess since Jay was born in a place without magic his power was locked away and it took a very stressful situation—or a lot of fear—to bring it out.”

“So he can use magic now?”

“Yes, but with it like it is, it’s going to be completely wild, untrained. And we don’t have time to fix it. We need to get to Zaida. We’ll have to deal with Jay later. Is there any way to make it go away, just until we have time to train him?”

“Aren’t you supposed to know that? You’re the magic expert!”

“I can make his magic go away but only until midnight and that’s not long enough!”

“Midnight?”

“It’s a thing. Dad put a limit on any wish we grant. They only last till midnight until we’re eighteen. We need something that will last a lot longer than,” she checks her watch, “three hours.”

“Oh,” Carlos scrambles to his feet. “I have something for that.” He races out the door.

Mal watches him go then turns back to Jordan. “What, exactly, is your plan to get Zaida back?” she asks.

“Someone needs to go to the Isle and get her.”

“Well, yeah, but how? It’s not like FG is just gonna give us the button for the bridge and besides, none of us can drive yet.”

“Maybe I can be of some assistance,” a new voice says. A bright spot of magenta, no bigger than a closed fist, flutters down to hover at eye level.

“Joy?” Jordan stares at the tiny fairy. “What were you--nevermind. I don’t want to know. What do you mean you can help?”

Joy flashes to her full size. At five feet ten inches, she is three inches taller than Mal in four-inch heels. Joy’s black wings flutter behind her and Mal could swear there were bits of dark pink glitter in her blonde dreadlocks. “I’m a sprite,” she says, “a _Neverland_ sprite. Portals and barriers are our specialty.”

Jordan’s eyes widen. “You can open the barrier.”

Joy nods. “A small piece of it, yeah. It’s too powerful for me to completely break and I wouldn’t be able to hold it open for long even if I wanted to, but long enough for someone to jump through real quick? Won’t even break a sweat.”

“And you could do it twice?”

Joy shoots Evie a smile. “No problem.”


	4. Chapter 4

Carlos races back in, a metal cuff two inches wide in his hand. He slides the last three feet to Jay on his knees.

“What is that?” asks Mal.

Carlos snaps the cuff onto Jay’s wrist. “Magic dampener. I was fiddling with it last week just to see if I could. I was going to ask Zaida to test it out for me today but…” he glances at Jordan, “I couldn’t find her.”

“When  _ was _ the last time anyone saw Zaida?” Evie asks.

“She was here this morning. We had breakfast together,” says Jordan.

“She was definitely in Magic Basics,” Joy adds.

“What about after lunch?” Carlos asks from the floor beside Jay.

Jordan shakes her head. “I don’t remember. We don’t have any classes together after lunch.”

The others shrug. Jordan growls, whirling to point at the vanity mirror behind Evie. Purple smoke swirls on the mirror’s surface. It clears to show Zaida. Zaida going through her day, a fast-forward of her walking through the halls, going to classes, eating lunch, chatting with friends. She stops by Aziz’s and Ben’s dorm room, smoking into her red and gold lamp. A shadow moves from under the bed.

“There!” Mal moves toward the mirror, frowning. “What is that?”

Jordan moves her finger to the left. The video in the mirror rewinds. Jordan stops and the video stops, showing Zaida mid-smoke. She moves her finger slowly to the right. The video plays in slow motion. They watch as Zaida disappears into her lamp and the shadow moves. Slowly, so slowly, the shadow brightens into the squat shape of a bright red bird with a garish yellow beak.

Evie sucks in a breath. “Is that…?”

Carlos nods. “Yeah.”

The bird hops forward, flutters onto the windowsill. The stopper for Zaida’s lamp is beside the lamp on the windowsill. The bird grabs it, flaps its wings until it hovers at the lamp’s mouth.

“Don’t do it,” Jordan hisses.

The bird shoves the stopper in and snatches the bottle in one clawed foot, flapping through the open window and out of sight.

“Iago,” Jay croaks. He can barely hold himself up to see the images playing across the mirror. Jordan twists her sight just a little and she sees deep red swirls moving just beneath his skin but the magic is contained, not a wisp breaks the surface.

Evie crouches beside him. “Feeling better?”

“What happened?”

“You fainted, dude,” Carlos tries, and fails, to say without grinning.

Jay scowls. “I did not faint.”

“Hate to break it to you, but you totally did,” Joy giggles.

“Like a pretty pink princess,” Mal adds with a smirk.

Jay scowls. “What was that red glow?”

“You have magic.”

He stares at Jordan. “You’re shitting me.”

“Nope,” Joy says. “You’ve got magic. A lot of magic. You’ll be needing lessons.”

“ _ After _ we get Zaida back,” Jordan snaps.

“How will we be doing that, exactly?” Evie asks. “I mean, Joy can get us through the barrier but from what Jordan says, this needs to quick, in and out. We won’t have time to fight our way to Zaida.”

Jordan growls. “I can’t go.” She folds her arms, looking miserable and helpless.

“I’ll need to stay on this side of the barrier to open it,” adds Joy. She looks at Mal. “You’re too recognizable and Evie, I hate to say it, but you’re about as stealthy as the Genie.”

Evie rolls her eyes but doesn’t argue.

Jay pushes shakily to his feet. “I’ll go—alone.” When Carlos opens his mouth to protest, Jay shakes his head. “I’ll move quicker on my own and it’s my dad who has her. It has to be me.”


End file.
